Now is the Time for Banks to Make a Play in the Mobile Wallet Market

San Francisco, CA, March 24, 2016: As consumer awareness of mobile wallets has risen dramatically, financial institutions have a perfect opportunity to stake a claim in this market. As the barriers to wallet adoption drop, and issues with merchant adoption and consumer hesitation lessen, FI-branded wallets stand ready to reap the benefits. Today, JAVELIN released, What’s in your Mobile Wallet?, and introduced Javelin’s S.C.O.R.E. wallet analysis model for assessing and comparing competing wallet providers.

For the past two years, the consumer’s primary bank has topped the charts, as the wallet consumers would be most likely to adopt. However, as the vast majority of FIs sat on the sidelines, consumer preference has shifted. Now, PayPal (63%) and Visa (56%) have both surpassed the primary bank (51%) as the mobile wallet providers of choice.

“The customer relationship is the trump card that issuers have to play in the mobile wallet game. Tapping into existing card functionality that your customers have come to expect quickly sets a higher bar for third-party wallet providers,” said Daniel Van Dyke, Analyst, Mobile, at Javelin.

The report, What’s in your Mobile Wallet? Lessons from Bank-Branded Wallet Pioneers, results are based primarily on information gathered from a survey of over 3,100 U.S. consumers benchmarked for the past three years. This report also includes case studies of two early bank entrants taking very different mobile wallet paths: Capital One Wallet and Chase Pay.